Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Elizabeth Warren Proposes Breaking Up Tech Giants Like Amazon

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 735 posts

Re: Elizabeth Warren Proposes Breaking Up Tech Giants Like Amazon

#41

Post by crowbahr »

untog wrote: post #14

Comparisons will be made to Microsoft and Internet Explorer but to me the really crucial part of this isn't market dominance in the "what app are you using" sense, it's data. Facebook, Google and Amazon really do have an unprecedented amount of data on us. And keep vacuuming up more and more of it. Facebook should never have been allowed to buy WhatsApp (and maybe not Instagram though I'm less concerned about that on…

Gut reaction: I feel like Android would not survive Google being forced to remove all their apps from the Google play store.

Re: Elizabeth Warren Proposes Breaking Up Tech Giants Like Amazon

#42

Post by Kephael »

These complaints are absurd and antibusiness. Every serious retailer sells their own brand of products. For instance, Walmart sells their own products under the "Great Value" label. Every FAANG caliber employee would have to look at relocating to work for a Chinese internet giant to make actual money or move to a proprietary trading firm.

edit: To the people down voting me, I am sorry that you cannot LeetCode.

Re: Elizabeth Warren Proposes Breaking Up Tech Giants Like Amazon

#43

Post by nck4222 »

jsutton wrote: post #35
travisoneill1 wrote: post #19

What is the alleged anti-competitive behavior? The article doesn't mention it. It sounds like she is calling for their breakup merely for being big and powerful, and if that were cause enough to break up an entity we would logically start with the government.

For starters, Amazon provided a marketplace platform for third parties to sell goods. They then gathered data on which items sold the best, created their own line of products based off this data, and crushed their customers-turned-competitors using their massive advantage in economies of scale.

FWIW, while I agree this a problem, large box retailers (Whole Foods before the Amazon acquisition, Walmart, etc) are well known for doing this as well.

So if that's the line you draw, it extends further than just tech giants.

Re: Elizabeth Warren Proposes Breaking Up Tech Giants Like Amazon

#44

Post by ropeladder »

c0nducktr wrote: post #21
sct202 wrote: post #8

I think we should also consider that even if you do break up a large company like that, you'd need to make sure they don't pull an AT&T and start merging with each other to basically re-create their previous structure.

Yeah, I'm still amazed that when AT&T was split up, there wasn't anything in the ruling preventing them from just joining the parts back together again.

Yeah it seems ridiculous in hindsight. I think what enabled the mergers though was less someone with a brilliant idea that they could just recombine, and more the drastic change in the government's conception and enforcement of antcompetitiveness laws. That is, they wouldn't have tried to merge back together if the they didn't think the government might let them. The government can and does does block mergers, still, and it makes sense that that they wouldn't just want to ban a specific company from a specific market share for all eternity.

Re: Elizabeth Warren Proposes Breaking Up Tech Giants Like Amazon

#45

Post by markharper »

The only news here is that Elizabeth Warren voiced support for such policies. There have been very reasonable arguments for breaking up Amazon and Google on anticompetitive grounds for years now. Breaking up Facebook from WhatsApp is less about anticompetitive behavior is more about privacy.

Re: Elizabeth Warren Proposes Breaking Up Tech Giants Like Amazon

#46

Post by kevinmchugh »

dEnigma wrote: post #31
kevinmchugh wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You could require freedom of speech apply to industry leaders for example. What does this mean? Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey, Jeff Bezos, et al already have their constitutionally protected speech, except for where their roles as executives at public companies restrict them. If they find those restrictions onerous they can leave their roles.

I think they meant requiring industry-leading companies to apply freedom of speech on their platforms. That is, no censoring of comments, videos, reviews, etc. as long as they don't violate the law.

So the idea is to "require freedom of speech to apply" by prohibiting corporations from setting their own terms of service, spam policies, etc? That sounds like a very serious restraint of speech.

Re: Elizabeth Warren Proposes Breaking Up Tech Giants Like Amazon

#47

Post by travisoneill1 »

jsutton wrote: post #35
travisoneill1 wrote: post #19

What is the alleged anti-competitive behavior? The article doesn't mention it. It sounds like she is calling for their breakup merely for being big and powerful, and if that were cause enough to break up an entity we would logically start with the government.

For starters, Amazon provided a marketplace platform for third parties to sell goods. They then gathered data on which items sold the best, created their own line of products based off this data, and crushed their customers-turned-competitors using their massive advantage in economies of scale.

You are allowed to crush your competitors with economy of scale provided that you don't do it by selling at a loss. That's actually the entire point of economy of scale. The reference in the article is to passing a law against this so clearly what Amazon did is legal now. Furthermore, we don't need a law for this as this type of thing is well handled by a non-compete clause, which I am surprised wasn't in the seller's agreements with Amazon.

Re: Elizabeth Warren Proposes Breaking Up Tech Giants Like Amazon

#48

Post by vlangber »

dekhn wrote: post #15
vlangber wrote: post #11

I think the most obvious candidate is to split Google and Youtube.

which would be very interesting, as youtube is 100% dependent on Google infrastructure to work (everything from machine learning to data delivery).

Sure, but those issues can be solved, both short-term and long-term.

Re: Elizabeth Warren Proposes Breaking Up Tech Giants Like Amazon

#49

Post by treis »

chadmhorner wrote: post #6
thr_w wrote: post #3

Is breaking them up really a priority? What benefit would that have that we couldn't achieve via properly taxing and regulating them in the first place?

I think the general theory is that if we allow them to continue getting bigger and swallowing up all potential competitors, we’re basically saying these four or five companies will run everything, forever.

I think that wildly overstates the influence these companies have. Amazon is trivial to avoid. Just don't shop there or at Whole Foods. Facebook is a bit trickier because you might be forced there by a social group and they have a huge web of trackers.

Google is really the issue. They are dominant in search, browser, and maps, and they're half the mobile duopoly. It's very difficult to avoid using their products entirely and even if you did, their dominance allows them to dictate how the internet works, to a certain extent.

Re: Elizabeth Warren Proposes Breaking Up Tech Giants Like Amazon

#50

Post by Kephael »

endofcapital wrote: post #2

Here we go, buckle up. With the amount of power democrats are likely to consolidate in the next few elections there could be some serious movement on this if it becomes a priority for the party. I think the big three are way too powerful and need to be broken up, but doing so intelligently is a tricky problem that I don't have much faith in government tackling. Zuckerberg integrating all the services yesterday seems…

This is another nonsensical plan, between ideas like this and 70% tax rates (that would certainly apply to people earning far less than $10M+ annually) there would be tanks in the street by 2026.
Post reply on HN